


Those Silent Ghosts

by RedThePear



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Javert Lives, M/M, Post-Seine, i dunno if javert's behavior applies as ptsd but, i guess there is angst of sorts, recovering javert
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-12
Updated: 2017-08-12
Packaged: 2018-12-14 12:47:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11783469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedThePear/pseuds/RedThePear
Summary: When Valjean brings back Javert from the Seine, he is a changed man, or rather a ghost. Living with him and tending to his recovery, Valjean changes as well, unknowingly.





	Those Silent Ghosts

Javert was hardly standing when Valjean bore him through the door of his bedroom. The night was ink-black and the only things he could distinguish of the exhausted man slouched against his shoulder were his ragged breathing and the wet steps he dragged across the floor. He could have lit a candle but there was no way of letting go of Javert, not after what he’d done. Hurriedly, Valjean led him to the only chair standing in the empty room, where he collapsed without uttering a sound.

Valjean did not talk either. He was too dumbfounded. Too shocked to cover Javert in those tenderly rough speeches he so well mastered. If his lips did not move, his arms did, and he took the mattress off his bed to place it on the floor next to him, putting on the wooden plank where it had stood a thin woolen plaid. Javert needed some rest, and he would not leave his side now.  
He approached the unmoving form on the chair, a blot of shadow in the black corner of the room, to delicately wrap a warm cover around it. He gently wiped the cold dread of water off Javert’s hair and body and carried him softly as he could, as we would have carried a wounded bird, to lay on the mattress.

Javert stood dumb for days. He lay in bed, staring at the bare stone wall in front of him with dead eyes. His cheeks grew sullen and his ashy hands seemed to not even have the strength to push away the plates of food Valjean relentlessly placed at his feet. He was a ghost. That was what Valjean told himself, gazing worriedly at the thin statue of grief on the mattress. Maybe his soul had stayed in the murky waters of the Seine after all. He did not notice, in his sad musings, that he was convinced Javert had a soul.

\------

It was at night that this mute statue was brought to life by visions of horror it was the only one to see. Javert writhed in his sleep and the thin bedsheets, the only ones Valjean had found, were not enough to muffle his screams. He stood in his bed, gazing restlessly at the wretched man below him. He did not dare touch Javert in these moments of savage dread. So Valjean stood watch over him, and his heavy hands gripped unconsciously the threadbare plaid as he wished he could grip the bony shoulders broken by shivers.

The days of silence and nights of screams came and went in a vicious circle that Valjean somewhat overcame with his stubborn kindness. He managed to keep Javert from starving and combed as he could his long hair. Every day it seemed to grow grayer. Every morning it was tangled from the nightmares of the previous evening. Javert never winced when the teeth of the comb got caught in his strands of brown and gray. Does he not even feel pain, wondered Valjean. Has the water taken everything away.  
He did not notice he thought Javert could feel.

Despite the long days they spent together, Valjean slowly grew too scared to touch Javert as he seemed to regain a flicker of life and health. He could not forget, perhaps, what these now skeletal hands had made him bear. The only contact he allowed themselves to have was the bare minimum of washing and combing. The man was starting to grow more independent, performing those simple actions with the utmost slowness but performing them nonetheless. Valjean watched this progress from a distance as he would have with the first steps of a rescued wolf. Soon, he thought, it would be too dangerous for him to continue this way.

\------

One night, the heavy cover of clouds draped over Paris cracked open and let out a terrible thunderstorm. Rain flooded the windows and roofs in a deafening clatter. In the dark room, Valjean lay on his stiff bed, eyes staring into the inky void around him. Flashes of hard white cut the black and releaved the huddled body of Javert on the ground, wrestling with the harsh shadows. The thunder covered his cries. He looked horribly, ruthlessly alone. Yet Valjean stayed still, and his eyes trembled as the man on the floor clawed into nothingness.

Javert extended out both arms in a desperate motion as if to keep from drowning in the flashes of black and white.  
Valjean stood up in his bed and bent towards him.

\------

When he awoke, the first thing Javert felt was the warm strength of Valjean’s hand clasped around his. He stared wide-eyed at their entwined fingers like a bird’s nest. Valjean was sound asleep, and he was not letting go.

When he awoke, the first thing Valjean saw was Javert’s unblinking gaze plunged into his own, still blurred by sleep.  
And for the first time in weeks, a deep voice, cracked and raspy as if covered in dust.  
«Thank you.»

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this after I came up with the idea in the middle of the night, and it has been an extremely challenging piece to polish. Writing a recovering character is very complicated, and I hope my way of portraying a mute, unmoving Javert is not offensive or too cliché... If it is, please tell me so and if you have advice for me to make it better, I'll gladly receive it!


End file.
